The first fantasy baseball podcast of the year was last week. If you missed it, I’ll give you an idea. Imagine the music for an action movie is playing, the beat is building, the tension is high, the sweat is drip, drip, dripping from your forehead. Only instead of looking for the bad guy or trying to stop a bomb from detonating, you’re sitting at your desk looking for a pencil. It was like Skyfall in your very own cubicle. Or if you listened to it in your car, then you probably had to pull off the road from heart palpitations. “Hey, roadside assistance, I was wondering if you could bring a heart defibrillator out to the Barham Pass? No, he was listening to the Razzball Podcast. Yes, in Dolby Digital.” We took last year’s laconic podcast and turned it into a shook-up bottle of tonic. This week, we tried to turn down the spin-your-glow-sticks-at-a-rave type energy in the background on just Rudy and me. So you get the Trainspotting energy on one hand and the Brad Pitt in True Romance on the other. Oh, and we talked baseball. On this week’s podcast, we brought in our prospect writer, Scott, and our OPS writer, Tom Jacks, to talk about position battles. (The name Tom seems like it needs a last name, right? Is it “Hey, it’s Tom!” or “Hey, it’s Tom Brady!” See?) Rudy talked about a new tool that we’re bringing out this year that we’re all very excited about. It’s like our Stream-o-Nator only turned up a notch and turned on its head. (Here’s a hint: it’s for hitters instead of pitchers. Eff me in the coolie, that’s awesome!) Then, I talked about picking up Cougars. So, you know, business as usual! Anyway, here’s the Razzball podcast (now with less heart-attack-inducing music):

I kept my trap shut earlier, but now gotta say I agree about the background music. It really did make me anxious while I was driving to work. It reminded me of the X-Files movie trailer; I kept expecting someone to yell, “There’s no time!”

@Nick the Podcast Host: you have this scray mobster voice. if you were to give me a warning about not paying my debt or i would be walking with a permanent limp, then i would pawn everything to pay up.

Will listen to this podcast in my car later with my 3-year old son. Should be better than the time last week when I picked him up and had my ASAP Rocky CD on. My son said, “I like this song.” Then it had horrible words in it so I took it off. I put on a music station and a Brenda K. Starr song was on. “Get this off, daddy. This song is bad. Put the guy song back on.”

Where would you want to pick in a 12-teamer — early, middle, or late 1st round? (Just asked a similar question in Rudy’s NFBC post).

Here are a few possibilities for my first two picks (5×5 Roto OBP league, I’m keeping Harper and Rizzo, start 3 OF, 1 Util, no CI/MI):

a) Pick 1 – Miggy, followed by whoever’s left of Holliday, Heyward or Pedroia
b) Pick 5 – Best left of Votto/Pujols/Prince, followed by my choice of the above guys, or maybe a top-5 3B if one of them slips through
c) Pick 10 – J. Upton, followed by Wright/Beltre
d) Pick 12 – Longo, followed by Kinsler or Adrian Gonzalez

Looking at both the LABR (Mixed) and Tout Wars results, any reason why you guys didn’t take Goldschmidt in the 2nd round of Tout? Both are 15-teamers, and you were picking at the end of the first round in each. Wishful thinking Goldy would make if back?

Personally I think Feliz Hernandez, Gonzalez, Gio Gallardo, Dan Haren and Huston Street make for a great core to work off of.

Is my pitching a mess due to having low strikeout guys like Hellickson and Cahill, combined with the Unpredictability of Haren (health), Lincecum (last year) and Burnett (age/decline) and having mid to low end RP’s with middling ratios (excluding Street)?

Can you please specify why my pitching sucks and how I can improve it. I ask because I KNOW hitting, but have struggled every year with forming a pitching staff, and its cost me championships.

Lincecum and Haren aren’t draftable due to their question marks, Cahill and Hellickson are barely end of the line starters in deep leagues… This stuff is gone over in my rankings… It’s clear which starters I like… You’re in a shallow enough league where you can recover from it though…

… and now it looks like Dom Brown is locking down e’eryday ABs in Philville. Charlie Manual’s crawdaddy trap never looked so overfilled with promise. I see Brown is in there at #74 in yer Top 80 OF, with projections as a platoon-er with Mayberry – but do you like him even hiiiiiiiiigher now?

@Grey: I like a lot of people in it, looks worth it. did you see I put up a link for over the edge for you. its on you tube and you can watch the whole thing. I might actually try one of my TV apps to watch that

I just found out this weekend (and the person who told me was like, “I seriously can’t believe you don’t know this) that if you press the Apple TV icon on your Apple device whatever you’re watching goes to your TV, so you could watch Youtube on TV… It blew my mind (this might be old news)…

@Grey: You can also stream music from your iPhone or iPad to an Apple TV. So if you can connect your Apple TV to your stereo, you can play whatever is on your dvice through your stereo speakers. It’s great with Spotify…

@Grey: seriously, it was a lot simpler back then. and when you were singin along to your favorite hip hop songs you felt like a dealer or a pimp when they would talk about getting hit up on their pager

Is there a post on middle relievers for holds leagues anywhere.
If not who do you rate as the top 5 or 10 that can contribute with multiple cats including holds but may not get more than a few token saves?

With reference to your Tout Wars draft, could you see taking Bautista at 14-15 in the ol’ 14-team H2H where we count average AND obp? PS has him 14th for 6×6 leagues (doesn’t quite match my leagues settings, but whatevs)…

Ha, tell us how you really feel about Stars & Scrubs! I agree with you for deep leagues (which is likely the format of most of your leagues, being a ‘pert). But what about shallow mixed leagues (12 team and lower), where endgame/waiver talent is strong? Aren’t leagues like that almost built for S&S? It’s interesting, I’ve seen the same trend you mentioned, people moving away from the approach, sometimes to the point where the top players were even depressed a bit, especially right at the beginning of auctions – what about the whole “zig while the market zags” thing?

Thanks for the Holds help…couldnt find it on the fancy new site.
Goldschmidt or Strasberg in a keeper.
I have Goldsmidt…I’m thinking of offering a trade. I have Prince as my 1B now with Kendrys as backup.
Would it have a chance of being accepted.

Need your advise. I’ve mentioned before that I play in a shallow 10 team league (no CI or MI, 3 OF, 1 UTL) and I have been adamantly talking to the commissioner in an attempt to expand the line up size. This is a league I started with my fraternity brothers 8 years ago, so bragging rights have been all of the incentive needed. However last year we changed it to a 25 dollar buy in, which I won, thanks to your help of course. Now we have agreed to make it 100 dollars.

My question is, how can I convince them to expand the line up? I’ve told them that we are playing with a beginners format and that with money on the line, we should play with higher integrity and standards. I explained how the waiver wire is always flush with hitters and expanding the line up would increase competitiveness and add more skill to the game, versus a higher level of luck. Any advise on how to sway them? Thanks!

hehe…the sad part is that they are all very smart educated guys, couple are lawyers, the comissioner even works in sport media in Miami. My only guess is that they are threatened and want to limit my advantage. Its no secret that I am the biggest baseball expert and most knowledgeable about fantasy baseball. They even made sure to limit weekly moves this year so I couldn't stream pitchers anymore haha

3 moves per week now, its rough. These are the only guys I don’t tell about your site… forgive me kind sir! The commissioner thought he could compromise and add one more bench spot, but I explained no one will carry more than two bench bats, instead using that extra spot for another pitcher, solving nothing.

12tm Dynasty league where we can keep up to all 28 players. I’m having a little difficulty deciding if I should drop my worst players (Ruggiano, Colvin, R. Cook, etc.) to free up some space for our re-draft where guys like Estrada, Ogando, Janssen, Grilli are available.

I finished 3rd last year so I’ll be getting the 10th overall pick which is why I’m not too sure if there’ll be guys better than I have available.

One thing to note is that once the season starts I’ll have 2-3 spots open up when I can utilize our DL spots.

I think I’d rather be an assassin than a serial killer. I watch Dexter, and man, that dude’s life seems so damn stressful. I could never keep all that killing nonsense straight AND write about fantasy baseball.

Yeah, Apple TVs have been around a wee while. You have access to more content in the US – there’s no Netflix access here for example, and there’s eff-all to buy via iTunes (no TV shows, though Apple TV isn’t to blame for that). I can watch live MLB though…

These are the moves I’m looking at making: dropping Rutledge for Espinosa (I know you love Rutledge, but I doubt anyone will take him and I’d be able to snag him back once I see how Colorado is going to play him or he starts hot); dropping Ethier for Middlebrooks (thinking that Ethier is blah and I like the upside potential of Middlebrooks even though he has a wonky wrist); dropping Burnett for Will Myers (again, I have a thing for the upside potential, especially in a keeper); dropping Pestano for either Marmol, Parnell, or Frank Frank.

What’s the hap on this? Should I chill or just maybe do Ethier for Espinosa and Pestano for one of those other closer-ish dudes?

This might be a stupid question, but any general advice for someone in a Keep-X Number of Players League? We’re switching from a league with point values set by when someone is taken in a draft/added/and their value to just a keep-12 league this year, upping to 18 maybe next year (with 5 minor league spots). I’m used to looking for value and trying to work my roster to keep the best team, now it just seems like I need to find the best players. I don’t even know if there’s a question in there, just wondering if you have any advice as I prep for our draft/season?

General draft strategy question: my league has changed from “saves” to “saves + holds”.

There were 52 pitchers that got at least 15 holds last year. There were only 15 that got at least 15 saves.

I don’t think I’m going to draft any RPs at all. Is that the right strategy in this situation? I mean, sure, crappy relievers can mess with your ratios. But not enough to counter the benefit of a top shelf offense and top shelf starting pitching. Right?

@Bobby: I know you are asking Grey, but I’m in an advanced league that uses saves*2+H, and the concept and approach is similar.

In almost all of these cases, the smart targets are SU guys who have a higher probability to close. Look at the Pestano’s, Jansen’s, Fujikawa’s, etc. That way, you can grab these guys on the back-end of the draft.

Further, I do like a 6/3 SP/RP split, instead of the normal 5/4 split, depending on personnel. Punting categories can be done, but is dangerous and leaves little margin for error. Also, keep in mind that when you over-saturate your pitching with all starters, there is a point of diminishing returns. Just my two cents.

Grey: Keeper pregunta…..Frazier or Gomez for last keeper as both count as a round 24 pick? Yahoo is touting Gomez(front page now) and I was leaning Frazier. I’m a bit torn seeing their article although why she looks sexy, I’m afraid she(Gomez) would give me the herps and am hoping your my protection from their dirty filth!

I meant to get Frazier for the ut spot. I think it’s great but when I check the Espn roto projections standings , I’m always last. Are thier projections screwed up or are people just drafting stats, instead of players.

@Buge Hoobs: OBPV – Offensive Best Player Available. With the shallow league and weekly changes you should keep only the pitchers you use every week and grab a new one if necessary. There should be a lot of arms.